


Charly's Choice

by Spatchcock



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, POV Minor Character, non-binary third-person pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 08:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8320573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatchcock/pseuds/Spatchcock
Summary: For the first time in hir life, el understood what it meant to think. To have independent thought. To have opinions. To have emotions. To want.
It hurt to want.
And then they had found out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please skip to the end notes for trigger warnings.
> 
> If Ron Moore had run ENT, this ep would have affected Trip for months, possibly the rest of the series. I thought it deserved some more air time, so to speak. 
> 
> Since the cogenitor is a third gender, I used _el, hir,_ and _hirself_ as pronouns.

            The door slid shut with an antiseptic hiss. Doors didn’t operate on hinges on this sophisticated vessel. The Vissians were far too civilized for doors which could slam. The cogenitor sank to hir knees on the thin carpet, head bowed, thinking with such ferocity el nearly forgot to breathe.

            Thinking.

            For the first time in hir life, el understood what it meant to think. To have independent thought. To have opinions. To have emotions. To want.

            It _hurt_ to want.

            Life had been so — no, _existence_ had been so much simpler before Trip Tucker. What had gone before could not have been called a life.

            He had introduced himself to hir. To hir! To the object trailing in the budding couple’s wake. That was all el had ever been, a facilitator, a means to an end. El was a cogenitor. What else was there, for hir? For those like hir?

            Now el knew.

            Trip had tracked hir down, spoken to hir like an equal, taught hir to read. That alone was a gift beyond reckoning. But he hadn’t stopped at books. He played music for hir, taught hir his favorite game, showed hir mighty _Enterprise_. El thought it much grander than the sterile Vissian ship, even though Trip had laughed in embarrassment at how primitive his species was in comparison to hirs.

           _Your people are so far advanced, so much ahead of us, we look like children._ A glance back at hir then, and he muttered something under his breath about “candy store.” El was pretty sure el knew what a store was, but —

_What’s candy?_

            _“What’s_ _candy_ _?”_ He whipped around to face hir so fast he nearly stumbled. _You’ve never had_ _CANDY_ _?_

            And then he would hear of nothing else until he had run the wild gamut of the galley for hir, so el could sample the scents and tastes and textures of two dozen different dishes from all the cultures of the _Enterprise_ crew.

            _Won’t anyone wonder why you brought all this food back to your quarters?_

_I just told Chef I’m stocking up for when I work late and can’t get to dinner. He likes to see people eat._ Trip winked. _A sentiment I can definitely get behind._

            He told hir about his family, loving and exuberant and accepting. Showed hir pictures of other planets. Explained about climbing mountains. Showed hir a _movie_. El had begun planning, the other movies el wanted to see, books el was going to read, food el could prepare, now that el understood that el could want.

_I could go to school?_

            _Yeah. That’s how you learn. First you get a basic education — you know, the three Rs — and then you can specialize, get more advanced training so you can have a job. A career._

            It sounded very exciting. Even the Rs.

            _Do people study mountains?_

_Well, they study rocks, I guess. Rock formations. That’s called geology._

_I could be a geologier?_

            A gentle laugh. _Geologist._

            El ducked hir head, still feeling a little shy and overwhelmed. _Geologist. I don’t know all the names for these things._

_Names. Yeah._ Trip made an irritated face, but el knew it wasn’t directed at hir, so el could indulge hirself in tracking the quicksilver play of musculature under his skin as his mobile features shifted from one expression into the next. _Your people are real funny about names._ ** _Porthos_** _has a name._

_Who’s Porthos?_

            _The cap’n’s dog. His pet_ _._ He shook his golden head. _You help them bring new life into the universe, and you don’t even get a name._

            _I...I would like — a name._

_I’ll get you a whole book of ’em,_ he promised. _You can pick whatever one you like. Or you can even make up your own._

            El had agreed, mostly out of politeness, partly because el would take any book he could give hir. But el had already known what name el wanted.

_Actually, my name’s Charles._

_Then I would like my name to be Charles._

            And then they had found out.

            They had been so angry, the budding ones. They raged at him — not at hir, of course, dismissing hir as beneath acknowledgment, let alone notice.

            _You can’t do this to her!_ Trip couldn’t quite wrap mind or mouth around the Vissians’ third-gender pronouns, so he defaulted to what made sense to him. El didn’t object. He thought hir gender was irrelevant; pointing it out would only undermine his argument. _She’s a person, just like you! You keep her locked up like an animal! Use her like a prostitute!_

_You could not possibly understand._ Calla’s voice was the cool silky sourness of the clotted cream el had tried for the first time that afternoon. _It is a cogenitor._ Calla deliberately used the human pronoun. It was a subtle insult, underscoring his inability to use the right words, but it was lost in the fire of the engineer's indignant rage.

**_It_** _has a mind!_ Trip roared. **_It_** _is just as smart as you are! **It** has the right to determine its own life! _

            _It doesn’t **have** a life,_ Rjo explained. He had liked Trip at first — who could not? One might as well dislike the sun — but he was losing patience with this pushy upstart backwards alien _._ _It doesn’t have rights; it has no need for them. It exists for one purpose. What else could it do?_

_You keep her like a slave. Like cattle._

            **_We_** _are trying to have a baby. I fail to grasp how you have any place to have anything to say about this at all. It is a personal matter for me and my wife._

_But not for her. **It.** The cogenitor. “Co.” That means “part of.” She’s “part of” this baby but she doesn’t get to have any “part of” the baby’s life. She’s “part of” your society but she doesn’t get a “part of” it for herself._

            That was what hurt the most. Knowing, now, that there was so much, and that el would never experience any of it.

            El had devoured the Terran books downloaded to the Vissian database. The Greek stories had been particularly interesting. Pandora. Prometheus. Sisyphus and Tantalus. Orpheus and Eurydice. So many emotions bubbled in hir, from these wild and ancient tales. Trip had been willing to talk about any of them. There was no thought of hirs he discounted. He was kind and respectful.

            And he was funny! El had laughed, so many times, at Trip’s words over that endless day. Not to be cruel, never to be cruel, but how bizarre and lively was his speech! He would stop, and realize what he’d said, and then smile that wide loopy grin and chuckle with hir.

            _What is this music?_

_Mozart._

_I like Mozart!_

            Laughter. _Charly, you’re like Will Rogers on a bender! You’ve liked everything I’ve shown you so far._

_Charly?_

            _...A nickname. A short version of your name, or a different name. One your friends call you. Like Trip. My grandad was Charles Tucker the first, my dad was the second, and I’m the third. So Grandad was Charles, Dad goes by Chuck —_

_And you’re Trip. And I’m — Charly._ El savored it, feeling it in hir mouth, letting it fill hir along with Mozart and masala and movies and mountain-climbing.

            And then the captain of _Enterprise_ had come, along with the woman even colder than the Vissians.

            El and Trip looked at each other. Worlds of sorrow and pain shimmered in his clear blue eyes.

            _I’m sorry._ The captain’s voice was very gentle. _We can’t —_

            _My name is Charly._ El had never felt so strong, so real.

            _Charly. I’m sorry._ ** _Enterprise_** _can’t give you asylum. You’ll have to go back to the Vissian ship._

            Then the deck dissolved beneath hir feet and Charly was falling, Icarus in terrible epiphany clawing at the insubstantial air. Hir head reeled. Hir hands tingled. The sound of hir own panting finally registered through the static filling hir ears.

            _I don’t want to go._

_Please come with me_. The woman’s eyes were slanted, her ears pointed, her skin tinged with olive. She was yet another intelligent species. How many were there? How much more would el never know?

            Charly turned and flung hir arms around Trip in a brief, fierce hug. He crushed hir to him. The smell of him, earthy, warm, utterly alien, restored hir senses, returned hir to reality. El was not of their world, their people, and never would be. Their dreams were not for hir.

            El left quietly, and did not look back.

 

            Now el was alone, in the room the budding couple had deigned to give hir. Half the size of Trip’s quarters. A bed. A dresser. Well, it would be full soon enough.

            El stretched out, reached under the dresser where el had hidden the small bottle of liquid and striker Trip had given her to work a combustion lamp. Calla and Rjo had searched the room, stripping hir of such gifts. Fortunately they had not been very thorough. Trip had not told hir what the substance was called, only that the pointed-eared woman used it in her own lamp. Charly was slightly sorry for that. Everything deserved a name.

            El sprinkled it liberally on hir head and clothes, smeared it into hir skin. El would not return to the darkness, the ignorance, the lifelessness the budders promised hir. It was intolerable. Charly wished el could be Prometheus, to bring fire back to Vissia for hir kind, but the phoenix would have to do.

            For the first time, for the last time, Charly made a choice, of hir own free will, unencumbered by the budders, by society, by hir gender, by anything.

            And there was light —

 

* * * * *

 

            Trip stumbled back to his quarters. At least, he assumed he had; he really didn’t remember the walk. Guilt and grief and horror hazed over this thoughts.

            The chair was just slightly closer than the bed. His legs chose to give out there. He doubled over slowly, shock rolling through him in waves.

            Black sparkles on the edge of his vision reminded him to breathe. He put a hand on the desk to pull himself upwards and knocked over a stack of PADDs instead. Books. His eyes weren’t quite focusing. The books he’d pulled out for her. Charly. He had fudged in the litany of his lineage; his father went by “Charlie.” But to tell her about _Flowers for Algernon_ would have been unnecessarily cruel. Now it was horrendously prophetic.

            One of the PADDs slipped onto his lap. Shakespeare. The Vissians had been immensely impressed by Shakespeare. Charly had wanted to know where to start.

            _You should read “As You Like It.” You’ll get a kick outta laughing at us silly bigendered people._

            _I won’t laugh at you,_ she insisted.

            _No, it’s okay, you’re supposed to laugh. It’s funny. Shakespeare wrote comedies too, not just tragedies._

            He blinked several times until the blur on the small screen resolved into words. A list of plays. _Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labours Lost, Macbeth._

            Well, that was appropriate.

            He selected and scrolled, barely able to feel his fingers, whispering the words.

_What, will these hands ne’er be clean?...Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand....Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone._

            The PADD tumbled from his loose grasp and clattered to the deck. Trip slid out of the chair, falling to his knees, and wept.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is canon-compliant with the episode "Cogenitor," where the eponymous character commits suicide offscreen. If that's a trigger for you, you may not wish to read.
> 
> Paramount owns Trek; I don’t. Not making any money off this.


End file.
